So Google thought that it was free and clear after the purchase of YouTube and getting agreements with some of the major players in the industry? Think again.

It looks like the old media dinosaurs are thinking that Google will be the way to recoup their losses in other media fields and going after the internet company with both barrels.

Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said on Tuesday it filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google Inc. and its Internet video sharing site YouTube over unauthorized use of its copyrighted entertainment.The suit accuses Web search leader Google and YouTube of “massive intentional copyright infringement” of Viacom’s entertainment assets and seeks an injunction against further violations.Viacom contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. via Reuters.com

Comments

Seems to me that the copyright infringers, real or alleged, are the people who put those film clips on YouTube, etc., not Google itself.

allan on
March 13th, 2007 2:57 pm

Does this those mean 15, 30 second shots are worth 1 billon. The bigger the corporations get the greedier. They probally want to pay their CEO 100,000 million bonus for all his hard work

Columbo on
March 13th, 2007 8:40 pm

That’s it…..I’m boycotting Viacom……..

Hey-I got the math question right-I can see my post!!!!!

yoyo muffintop on
March 14th, 2007 1:29 am

They’ll settle…and viacom has every right to protect their copyrighted material, but it was a completely calculated move on part of Viacom. Ya, they could have crushed youtube under copyright violation lawsuits before it was bought by Google, but why? Viacom knows full well that all their copyrighted material posted on youtube is free promotion for them. So destroying youtube before it was bought by Google would yield them nothing and would even hurt them, becuase they’d have to spend millions to buy the same kind of exposure that youtube has given them for free. But now since youtube has a rich sugar daddy by the name of Google it’s time for Viacom to reap the beny’s.
But remember – what makes Viacom’s case even stronger is that Google actually makes advertising profit from youtube, so unlike other content sharing services(p2p) Google can’t argue that it’s just a medium for content exposure for its users.